Amnesty International describes Israel as an apartheid state in new report

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Amnesty International describes Israel as an apartheid state in new report
https://forward.com/news/481745/amnesty-international-describes-israel-as-an-apartheid-state-in-new-report/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=news

Amnesty International, a widely respected human rights group, plans to release a report on Tuesday accusing Israel of committing apartheid and describing its existence as a Jewish state as a deprivation of Palestinians' basic rights. Israeli officials on Sunday denounced the report as "antisemitism."

In a 211-page report set for publication on Tuesday and obtained by the Forward, Amnesty alleges that Israel is involved in a "widespread attack directed" against Palestinians that amounts to "the crime against humanity of apartheid."

Amnesty, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, has previously condemned Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and accused it of committing war crimes during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. But this report is the first time the group is officially using the term "apartheid" to describe it.


The Amnesty report follows a similar report from Human Rights Watch last April; that report came after two leading Israeli human-rights groups began using the term apartheid.

Human Rights Watch, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, issued its own lengthy report detailing its rationale for using the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in a report about Israel. The Israeli group Yesh Din had begun using the term in 2020 and B'Tselem, another Israeli group, had adopted it in January 2021.

But while the HRW report accused Israel of discriminating against Palestinians in all areas under its control but of practicing apartheid only in the areas beyond its original 1948 borders, the Amnesty report applies the term "apartheid" to the state's internal operations as well.

"Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony," the report states, "and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession."

It also argues that "almost all of Israel's civilian administration and military authorities" are involved "in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel" and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as "against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory."

A spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry called the report "pure antisemitism" that "legitimizes attacks against Jews" and accused Amnesty International of a double standard.

"The purpose of this report is to eliminate the State of Israel as a nation-state of the Jewish people and the solution they give is for Israel to cease to exist," said the spokesperson, Lior Haiat.

Major Jewish American groups condemned the report, calling it baseless and one-sided.

"The report commits a double injustice: It fuels those antisemites around the world who seek to undermine the only Jewish country on earth, while simultaneously cheapening and downplaying the horrific suffering that was a result of apartheid in South Africa," the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said in a joint statement with the Anti-Defamation League, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America and other groups.

But while they labeled it an "ideologically-driven polemic" document, the pro-Israel groups refrained from describing the report as antisemitic. An AIPAC spokesperson demurred when asked if the lobby group agreed with Israel's foreign ministry's conclusion, saying their "views are represented" in the joint statement they issued on Sunday.

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Why Amnesty is taking aim at the 'root causes' of Israeli apartheid
Amnesty International's Saleh Hijazi speaks to +972 about his organization's new report, the Israeli government's harsh response, and why our analysis of Israeli apartheid needs to begin from 1948.
https://www.972mag.com/amnesty-international-apartheid-report/

Even before Amnesty International's bombshell new report on Israel-Palestine was released on Tuesday morning, the Israeli government and some of the most prominent pro-Israel organizations around the world were on the offensive. The report, titled "Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity," was leaked to the Israeli government as well as the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, each of which roundly accused Amnesty International of outright antisemitism.

It's not hard to see why Israel and its supporters are feeling like their backs are against the wall. The 280-page report by the world's premier human rights organization is a damning indictment of what Amnesty calls Israel's "system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights," including in the occupied territories, Israel, and everywhere that Palestinian refugees are living. The investigation includes details on Israel's military occupation, segregation, torture, land confiscation, restrictions on movement, and denial of citizenship and nationality, among other violations.

But Amnesty's report is not merely descriptive. Like similar recent reports by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and B'Tselem, Amnesty demands that Israel's apartheid regime be dismantled, and that the International Criminal Court (ICC) take into account the crime of apartheid as it investigates potential war crimes in the occupied territories. This is precisely why the report is so terrifying for Israel and its supporters.

I sat down with Saleh Hijazi, Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director of the Middle East and North Africa region, following the press conference in Jerusalem marking release of the report on Tuesday. We spoke, among other things, about the Israeli government's attacks on his organization, why Amnesty deliberately talks about 1948 as the starting point of apartheid, and navigating criticisms from Palestinian and Israeli allies.

Amnesty International's Saleh Hijazi speaks during a press conference on the organization's new report on Israeli apartheid, February 1, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

We're just a few hours after the release of Amnesty's report, which was met with an extremely severe response by Israel and various organizations around the world, who claimed the report was "antisemitic" and "spreads lies of terrorist organizations." Did those reactions shock or surprise you?

Unfortunately not. The use and weaponization of antisemitism to attack those who criticize Israel's policies specifically when they relate to Palestinians is a tactic that has been used for many years, including against Amnesty International. These types of false and baseless attacks are expected from governments and states that systematically abuse human rights, or in this case impose a system of repression and domination that amounts to apartheid. When you provide solid analysis that a crime against humanity is taking place, the government certainly perpetrating it is going to be worried.

Did you experience any pressure from the Israeli government while working on the report?

No. The government has decided not to engage with us constructively, despite the fact that we have repeatedly requested meetings and information from them for many years. Since I began working for Amnesty in 2011, we've had only one meeting with the Foreign Ministry, which took place in 2012. Since then, every letter that we've sent requesting meetings or asking for information from the government or the army has gone unanswered.

It's important to mention that in this context, Israel continues to ignore our requests to access the Gaza Strip. We want to enter Gaza to examine the human rights situation resulting from the illegal blockade that amounts to collective punishment, or the effects of Israeli military offenses, as well as to examine violations by the Palestinian authorities there, particularly the Hamas government and various armed groups.

Human Rights Watch put out a report on Israeli apartheid in April 2021. What kind of lessons did you draw from their report, and how did their work guide your thinking?

The Human Rights Watch report was absolutely influential. HRW is a major human rights organization that provides top-notch documentation and legal analysis, which we had to examine, reflect on, and think about how our own research and analysis compares, as well as how we can work together. With the launch of our report, we are hopefully going to form, along with HRW and other Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, an anti-apartheid coalition.

I do have a feeling that the reaction to Amnesty's report is much louder and harsher than the reaction to HRW's report. With Amnesty, you're bringing in the power of a movement. A major part of our launch is not only the report and campaign, but also a human rights education element. We've put online a human rights education course on Israeli apartheid that will be available to anyone with internet access in a number of languages, including Hebrew. We put a lot of work and energy into this course because we wanted to take advantage of having membership that can take action and be effective. For that, they need to understand how apartheid works in Israel-Palestine, so that they can then go and talk to their elected officials.

Your report traces the roots of Israeli apartheid back to 1948, which is something many human rights organizations often tend to shy away from. Can you speak about the thinking behind choosing to make that the starting point?

This report took four years to write, but the story is much longer than that. After the ICC announced it had jurisdiction over the occupied territories, we began to look at the way in which we can make international justice a central part of the human rights work that Amnesty does on Israel-Palestine. Once we began examining the patterns of violations from that lens, the crime of apartheid immediately emerged as something that as a human rights organization we could examine. The next step was formulating a global policy for how Amnesty International understands the crime of apartheid as embedded in international law, as well as a way for us to determine what does or does not constitute apartheid. The process of formulating that criteria was completed in 2017.

What the report does is look at the last 20 years, but to fully understand the situation today, you need to trace some of the system's main components back to their roots. This includes territorial fragmentation, segregation and control, dispossession of land and property, and the deprivation of economic and social rights. These are the elements that make up the Israeli apartheid system today, but they don't start there.

So we go back to 1948 and see how, upon the establishment of the state, Israel passed laws regarding nationality and status, whereupon Palestinians who remained in Israel after the Nakba were granted citizenship but not treated as nationals, as opposed to Israeli Jews. The Law of Return allowed only Jews to return to Israel and be granted automatic citizenship, while Palestinians who were fragmented as a result of ethnic cleansing were denied that right of return. When it comes to property, the Absentees' Property Law and the various laws that make up Israel's current land regime were all passed in the 1950s. The strategy of military rule in the occupied territories is the same strategy used by Israel against Palestinian citizens of Israel between 1949 and 1966.

So you begin to see how these elements that make up the system all started right after the establishment of the State of Israel. That is why the analysis needs to begin from there rather than from the occupation of 1967.

The report also calls for the return of Palestinian refugees, which is something major human rights organizations don't typically do.

The initial act of Palestinian fragmentation took place during the ethnic cleansing — the Nakba of 1948 — which saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and not allowing them to return, which is a right granted in international refugee law, as well as UN General Assembly Resolution 194. The denial of the right of return is crucial for maintaining a system whose intention and aim is to maintain Jewish demographic hegemony and maximum control over land. If you want to keep that hegemony, you simply will not allow the millions of Palestinian refugees living in camps across the Middle East to return. That's how it becomes a crucial part of our analysis on apartheid.

Palestinian activists have been using terms such as "apartheid" and "settler colonialism" to describe the regime between the river and the sea for years. How has the work of those activists influenced and guided your thinking in crafting this report?

It is the responsibility of an international human rights organization to react when local organizations are making a claim. We acknowledge that we're late to this and should have examined it before. But there are two reasons why we are doing it now: First of all, and this is unrelated to Israel-Palestine, we have come to see that systems of institutionalized discrimination and violently racist — with apartheid being the most extreme manifestation of those systems — are unfortunately prevalent across the world, and we found that we need to face that head on.

There were also requests from Palestinian organizations, as well as from our own members, to investigate whether the crime of apartheid was being perpetrated here. When we started doing that, we revisited the body of knowledge that had been produced by Palestinian activists, academics, and intellectuals, going back many years — including the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society organizations for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, which was based on the apartheid framing. The discourse, knowledge, and legal analysis generated by Palestinians was part and parcel of the research that we did.

As a Palestinian member of Amnesty International, was it difficult trying to get what is often viewed as such a "toxic" topic on the agenda? Did it take a lot of persuading your superiors?

I was happily surprised that this move was actually not led by Palestinians in the organization. We have many friends in the International Secretariat [the body responsible for the majority of Amnesty International's research and which leads its campaigning work] and in various sections who took the lead on this, and with whom we worked shoulder to shoulder. In 2011, Amnesty Greece sent the International Secretariat a request to look into the situation in Israel-Palestine. As a democratic movement, you have to respond to this kind of request. After that, another request came from Amnesty Spain, and there were a number of other informal requests from sections around the world.

Were there difficult conversations with Amnesty Israel during the process? Yes. It was particularly difficult for Palestinians and Israelis in the movement. Those conversations were great and necessary, and now that the report is out, they open up a lot of opportunities. Eventually, the Israel section decided that they may face legal consequences for carrying out this kind of work. Some of the recommendations [in the report] may be seen as calling for sanctions or a boycott of Israel, and that the anti-boycott law can be used against them, and therefore decided to not engage proactively on this report, but would use it [as an opportunity] to open crucial conversations on the issue. Hopefully, should they decide to become more proactive, they will have membership all around them to support. 

But not everybody is celebrating. We saw [Local Call editor and +972 writer] Orly Noy, who moderated today's press conference, begin her remarks by saying that as a Jewish Israeli, this was not a joyous day. We've also seen a lot of Palestinians telling us, "You're late," or asking "Where have you been?" or "What about talking about settler colonialism?" Obviously, we all live the reality here and Palestinians live the oppression on a daily basis, so it is not easy, and I was not expecting anybody who faces such high stakes and is involved professionally and personally to take it so easily.

What do you say to Palestinians who are skeptical of what these reports can actually do for them? You had members of the Salhiyeh family, who were expelled from their home in Sheikh Jarrah a few weeks ago, stand up during the press conference and ask you what you can do about their eviction and what is happening in their neighborhood.

It's difficult to answer that question. You look at the reality here — it's a relatively small country, Palestinians and Israelis together make up less than the population of Sao Paulo. You have had decades of reports, commissions, and investigations by the UN and human rights organizations. You have very professional civil society organizations, both Palestinian and Israeli, who comprehensively document human rights violations. And yet the situation only gets worse. It is this realization that makes this report so relevant.

Will [the report] bring the change that is required immediately? Absolutely not. This requires strategizing, working together, and partnerships. We're seeing this happen, including between Palestinian and Israeli organizations, which is something we have not seen before. This is promising.

The Salhiyeh family and others will not see an immediate change. And unfortunately the evictions and home demolitions will continue, while the situation in the Naqab will only get worse. But I feel that the apartheid analysis will allow us to connect all the dots so that we are not always shifting from focusing on administrative detention, and then going to unlawful killings, and then a demolition in the Naqab. Now we can connect the dots. When you do that you can see the system of apartheid. This paves the way for tackling these violations in a more strategic manner. We're not dealing with symptoms anymore, we're dealing with root causes.

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Apartheid 2.0: Amnesty International Joins Chorus condemning Israeli rule over stateless Palestinians
https://www.juancole.com/2022/02/international-condemning-palestinians.html

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli state has won the trifecta of condemnation by major human rights organizations, as, on Tuesday, Amnesty International joined with Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem in calling Israeli rule over the 5 million Palestinians of the Occupied Palestinian Territories a form of Apartheid.

Amnesty carried out its investigation and analysis for four years, from 2017 until the end of 2021, so they did not exactly jump to conclusions. Amnesty carefully defines the crime with which it is charging the Israeli authorities. Apartheid, they say, is committed "when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system." AI adds, "A regime of oppression and domination can best be understood as the systematic, prolonged and cruel discriminatory treatment by one racial group of members of another with the intention to control the second racial group."

Amnesty notes that the Israeli government's policies aim at empowering Jews and denying basic rights to Palestinians. After the Israeli military seized the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza in 1967, this was the policy pursued by military governors: "Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded."

The report observes that in Israeli law, Jews are privileged. Anyone of Jewish heritage can immigrate into Israel. The families of Israelis of Palestinian heritage who live abroad do not have that right. "Arab-Israelis" are not allowed to serve in the Israeli army, save for the small Druze and (non-Arab) Circassian communities. AI points out that for the first 18 years of Israel's existence, Israeli citizens of Palestinian heritage were kept under military rule. After the seizure of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza in 1967, many of the techniques of control developed via martial law for "Arab Israelis" were deployed against the occupied Palestinians.

The use of the Israeli army is an essential tool of control against the Palestinians, who are frequently thrown in the brig and court-martialed even though they are civilians. AI writes,

" Since 1967, the Israeli authorities have arrested over 800,000 Palestinian men, women and children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, bringing many of them before military courts that systematically fail to meet international standards of fair trial, and where the vast majority of cases end in conviction."

800,000 arrested. There are only 5 million Occupied Palestinians, so on the order of 16 percent have been incarcerated at one time or another.

But you will say hundreds of thousands of Jews live in the Occupied West Bank, including in Jerusalem and its environs. You would be right, but they live under a different, non-military system. AI points out,

"By contrast, Jewish settlers have been exempted from the military orders governing Palestinians since the late 1970s after Israel extraterritorially extended its civil law over Israeli citizens residing in or travelling through the OPT. Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank are therefore brought before Israeli civilian courts."

AI covers other elements of Apartheid, including the statelessness of Palestinians in the Israeli- Occupied Territories, obstacles to family unification, and obstacles to travel both locally and abroad. None of these policies affect Israeli Jews. Then there is the matter of Palestinian property not really belonging to them, since the Israeli state can steal it from them at will. Amnesty says,

"In 1948, Jewish individuals and institutions owned around 6.5% of mandate Palestine, while Palestinians owned about 90% of the privately owned land there. Within just over 70 years the situation has been reversed."

Israeli propaganda is so wide-ranging that it even wants to dispute this plain fact, which is summarized in the famous map:



The Amnesty case is devastating. The report has of course attracted the ire of the Israeli propaganda establishment and its backers in the US Israel lobbies. Those lobbies have so far managed to marginalize anyone who points out what is actually going on over there. They have somehow managed to keep Palestine news off American television. It is becoming harder and harder, however, for the propagandists to hide the elephant of Apartheid in the Israeli room, as US civil libertarians begin being more vocal and calling the Israeli treatment of Palestinians by its name.

It needs to be underlined that although Apartheid was the term used in the Dutch-derived Afrikaans language for systematic government segregation policies in twentieth-century South Africa through the early 1990s, using the term for Israel-Palestine does not imply that the Mideast situation is like South Africa's in every respect. Rather, the crime of Apartheid, starting off from the South Africa example, has become a key part of international law.

I have explained :  Article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973) defines it this way:

"The term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to... inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."

The 2002 Rome Statute, which has 123 signatories among the nations of the world, and which established the International Criminal Court, contained a definition of Apartheid.

'The crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts . . . committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime...

Apartheid is one of the listed "crimes against humanity" along with enslavement, torture, war rape, and forcible deportation. A crime against humanity is the systematic and continuous commission of war crimes

Because of these international law instruments (the Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty), Apartheid now refers to a generalized crime, not just the policy of the old South African government.

As a result, the Court can under some circumstances charge individual politicians with the crime of Apartheid. Those circumstances are that 1) the country has signed the Rome Statute or 2) that the UN Security Council has forwarded the case of a war criminal to the ICC. Neither of these circumstances fits Israel, since it is not a signatory and the US would veto any attempt to charge a major Israeli politician at the International Criminal Court. This inability to bring Israeli officials to the Hague, however, is merely procedural. As a matter of law, Israel can still be guilty of Apartheid practices.

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On the Origins of "Genocide": What We Learn from Amnesty's Report on Israeli Apartheid
The biggest lie perpetrated by Zionists is that Israel is somehow a response to the crime against humanity perpetrated against Jews by Nazi Germany. In fact, Israel is itself a crime that needs to be pointed out.

By VT Editors -March 14, 2022
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2022/03/14/on-the-origins-of-genocide-what-we-learn-from-amnestys-report-on-israeli-apartheid/

By Miko Peled

JERUSALEM – With the war in Ukraine providing cover, Israel continues its unchecked violence towards the Palestinian people who live within its control. And as the world stands mesmerized and distracted by Vladimir Putin, Israel continues to perpetuate what Amnesty International called Crimes Against Humanity targeting the Palestinian people.

Crimes against humanity
In his outstanding book "East West Street," Philippe Sands, a professor of law at University College London, relates the stories of the two jurists who wrote the crimes of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity into international law. These were two Polish-Jewish jurists who had lived on opposite sides of the same street in the town of Lemberg, or Lviv, which is now in western Ukraine. Their names were Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin.

In the prologue, Sands writes, "A little after three o'clock in the afternoon the wooden door behind the defendants' dock slid open and Hans Frank entered courtroom 600." Hans Frank was Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer and then the governor-general of German-occupied Poland during World War II. He was responsible for the forced labor and murder of millions of Jews and Poles. Sands continues:

Seated no more than a few feet from Frank in a black suit, Lauterpacht was the one who came up with the idea of putting the term 'crimes against humanity' into the Nuremberg statute, three words to describe the murder of four million Jews and Poles on the territory of Poland.

Of Hersch Lauterpacht, Sanz writes in the British daily The Guardian: "Most crucially, he crafted the language of Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter, enshrining crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression into modern international law." Hans Frank was tried, convicted, and hanged for his crimes.

Post-World War II
The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals that were held following World War II by the Allied forces. The defendants were among the leadership of Nazi Germany that were caught and taken into custody. The trials went on from the fall of 1945 until the end of 1946.

Undoubtedly one of the most significant results of, and one might even say reactions to, World War II was the creation in May 1948 of the State of Israel, the so-called "Jewish State." The State of Israel was supposed to be a refuge for Jews who suffered persecution and an answer to the Holocaust. In fact, Israel was neither. The vast majority of survivors of the Holocaust opted either to return to their countries of origin or to emigrate to places other than the State of Israel.

Later on, Jewish people who felt they had to leave their country of origin ended up in Israel only as a last resort and many of those who did go there regretted their decision. Even as late as the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union drove Jewish people to emigrate, those who ended up in Israel did so mostly because they either had no other option or the visas to other countries demanded longer wait times and they wanted to leave immediately instead of wait.

Amnesty report
The title of the Amnesty report on the Israeli apartheid regime is, "Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity." The report states the following regarding the state of Israel:

Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis while minimizing the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights and obstructing their ability to challenge this dispossession. In 1967, Israel extended this policy beyond the Green Line to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which it has occupied ever since. Today, all territories controlled by Israel continue to be administered with the purpose of benefiting Jewish Israelis to the detriment of Palestinians, while Palestinian refugees continue to be excluded.

Apartheid is a violation of public international law, a grave violation of internationally protected human rights and a crime against humanity under international criminal law. Three main international treaties prohibit and/or explicitly criminalize apartheid: the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (Apartheid Convention) and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute).

The crime against humanity of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention, the Rome Statute and customary international law is committed when any inhuman or inhumane act (essentially a serious human rights violation) is perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system.

hat we learn from the report, and what Palestinians have been saying all along, is that not only is the State of Israel not a refuge for persecuted Jews or a response to the Holocaust, but it was in fact, from its very establishment, a crime against humanity perpetrated against the Palestinian people. To assume that there was, is, or ever could be an Israel that is not an apartheid regime is a complete misunderstanding of Zionism and of the state of Israel.

The consequences of this report are – or rather, have the potential to be – far-reaching. The fact that this crime against humanity was allowed to be perpetrated in Palestine only three years after the crime was officially entered into the realm of international law must not be ignored. Furthermore, the biggest lie perpetrated by Zionists is that the State of Israel is somehow a response to the crime against humanity that was perpetrated against Jews by Nazi Germany. In fact, Israel is itself a crime that needs to be pointed out.

Moreover, Palestinians have not only suffered from the crime of apartheid, but they have also suffered from fighting against it. Palestinians who have stood and fought against this crime have paid a heavy price. Even Palestinians who have never held arms in their life have served time in Israeli prisons and are labeled terrorists. It must be pointed out that these men and women are courageous freedom fighters and they must be heralded as such.

It is not surprising that this Amnesty report is being condemned by Western governments or that it is rarely discussed by the corporate media. The potential it carries is enormous and it is up to people of conscience to act and demand that the recommendations be carried out without delay.

LONDON – The Amnesty International report about Israel's apartheid system states that, since its founding in 1948, Israel has in fact constituted a "cruel system of domination and crime against humanity." It further states:

Amnesty International has analyzed Israel's intent to create and maintain a system of oppression and domination over Palestinians and examined its key components: territorial fragmentation; segregation and control; dispossession of land and property; and denial of economic and social rights. It has concluded that this system amounts to apartheid.

Crimes against humanity
The report correctly states that the designation of Israeli apartheid places it firmly in the category of "Crimes Against Humanity." This is not an insignificant conclusion. The report says that the inhuman or inhumane acts committed by Israel "amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid under both the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute."

According to the Cornell Law school Legal Information Institute (LII):

Crime against humanity refers to a category of crimes against international law which includes the most egregious violations of human dignity, especially those directed toward civilian populations. The modern understanding of crimes against humanity is codified in the founding statutes of the international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

As codified in Article 7 of the ICC Statute, the following acts are punishable as crimes against humanity when perpetrated by a state actor as part of a systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population:

murder;
extermination;
deportation or forcible transfer;
false imprisonment;
torture;
rape, sexual slavery, or enforced sterilization;
ethnic persecution;
disappearance;
apartheid;
Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health. The intent requirement for liability is "knowledge of the attack."

The Amnesty report states clearly that Israeli apartheid falls under this category and provides data to show that these crimes were perpetrated with intent.

Opportunities for campaigns
The reality that this report has brought forward opens doors to a much more aggressive anti-apartheid campaign than we have seen so far. When Zionist organizations hold events, they do so in support of Israel; they encourage others to support Israel financially and politically. These organizations need to reserve conventions centers and hotels, the corporate offices of which should have copies of the Amnesty report on their desks alongside a demand that they refuse to cater to Zionist organizations.

According to the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, "[i)nternational criminal responsibility is to apply to individuals, members of organizations and representatives of the State who commit, incite or conspire to commit the crime of apartheid."

Furthermore, according to Article III of the Convention:

International criminal responsibility shall apply, irrespective of the motive involved, to individuals, members of organizations and institutions and representatives of the State, whether residing in the territory of the State in which the acts are perpetrated or in some other State, whenever they:

(a) Commit, participate in, directly incite or conspire in the commission of the acts mentioned in Article II of the present Convention;

(b) Directly abet, encourage or co-operate in the commission of the crime of apartheid.

Article III (a) and (b) both apply both to the Zionist organizations that lobby and promote Israel in the United States. The corporations that provide services to these organizations need to know that they are providing services to criminal elements and that this will be used against them in campaigns that demand accountability.

Each year in cities across the United States, Zionist pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC, J-Street, the ADL – and the largest Zionist organization of them all, Christians United for Israel, or CUFI – hold their multi-million dollar events. These events require an enormous amount of planning and logistics, including a major convention center, hotel rooms, catering, transportation, and more products and services.

These conferences provide millions of dollars of revenue to the cities and to the establishments that host them. While the money these organizations provide is a strong incentive for businesses that cater to them to look the other way, the companies and corporations that provide the services to Zionist organizations need to understand that they are playing with fire.

Hosting racist, violent organizations that perpetuate hate may be protected by the right to make a profit, but now we are talking about serving organizations that are perpetrating crimes against humanity. CEOs and members of the boards of Hilton, Marriott, and other major hotel chains, as well as the cities that rent out the convention centers, must know that catering to pro-Israeli groups is no longer acceptable. The recommendations of the Amnesty report make it clear that supporting Israel in any way constitutes collaboration with a crime against humanity and that anyone who does this will be outed and held responsible.

No longer terrorists
In September of 2020, Palestinian leader and resistance commander Leila Khaled was scheduled to participate in a panel hosted by San Francisco State University. The event was to take place via Zoom but, bowing to pressure by Zionist groups, Zoom canceled the event. The event was then shared live via Facebook and YouTube, both of which later deleted video of the event.

The reason given for the cancellation by Zoom was that Khaled belongs to the PFLP, an organization listed by the United Stated as a terrorist organization. However, since Israel has been committing crimes against humanity by imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, Palestinians who resist cannot be considered terrorists, but freedom fighters. What people would not stand up and fight a racist, violent regime that is imposed upon them? Americans certainly hold dear the line "Live Free or Die," and so do Palestinians.

The data and the detailed investigations that brought about the Amnesty report must also be used to free Palestinians that resist apartheid from the weight of the "terrorist" designation and open the doors to allow them to participate freely in the discussion on how to bring an end to the apartheid regime.

The endless possibilities created by the Amnesty report can bring about change in Palestine for the better. However, things will not change unless people who care for justice and freedom take this report and use it wisely.




Miko Peled is MintPress News contributing writer, published author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. His latest books are"The General's Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine," and "Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five."

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Scoop: Israel's "top priority" mission to discredit UN probe
https://www.axios.com/israel-discredit-un-human-rights-probe-gaza-palestinians-951e3799-2f2b-4c1f-ad3c-5a8a15aa7ac9.html

Israel is planning a campaign to discredit a UN commission formed to investigate the violence in Gaza last May and the root causes of the protracted conflict in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, according to an Israeli Foreign Ministry cable seen by Axios.

Why it matters: Israeli officials say they are highly concerned that the commission's report will refer to Israel as an "Apartheid state" and that its findings could damage Israel's reputation, particularly among progressives in the West. The report is expected in June.

The backstory: The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva voted narrowly last May to form the Commission of Inquiry. The Western democracies on the committee objected to the fact that the commission's mandate was unusually broad when it came to investigating Israel, and didn't specifically mention investigating Hamas.

Rights groups accused both Israel and Hamas of international law violations during two weeks of fighting last May, in which over 250 people were killed in the Gaza Strip and 13 in Israel.

The commission is designed to be ongoing, with reports due every June to the council in Geneva and every September to the UN General Assembly in New York.

In addition to probing conflicts in the West Bank and Gaza, the commission was also tasked with investigating human rights violations in Israel.

Details: The commission is headed by former UN commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay, former UN special rapporteur Miloon Kothari and human rights law expert Chris Sidoti.

Israel has declined to cooperate with the inquiry and claimed the commission's mandate and membership are biased against Israel. The Biden administration doesn't support the inquiry and played a central role in cutting its funding by 25% in UN budget negotiations.

Behind the scenes: Last week, the international organizations department of Israel's Foreign Ministry sent a classified cable to all Israeli diplomatic missions around the world. It designated the commission of inquiry as its "top priority" at the UN in 2022.

The cable said the Foreign Ministry was about to start a diplomatic campaign on the issue that will be increased ahead of the UN Human Rights Council meeting in March.

Israel has had some partial successes in the past when seeking to discredit UN commissions. In some cases, UN investigators have resigned, and the judge behind a probe of the 2008 Gaza war later backtracked on some of his conclusions.

The other side: A spokesperson for the commission of inquiry declined to comment directly on Israel's criticism but said the commission was comprised of three independent and impartial experts who are not paid for their work and will investigate allegations of international law violations by all parties — state or non-state — without distinction.

"As an independent body, the Commission conducts its own investigations independently and separately from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other United Nations offices and agencies," the spokesperson said.




Israel/OPT: Israel is committing apartheid, says UN Special Rapporteur
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/israel-opt-israel-is-committing-apartheid-says-un-special-rapporteur/

The Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories(OPT), Michael Lynk, has submitted a report to the Human Rights Council, concluding that the situation in the OPT amounts to apartheid.

Saleh Higazi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said:

"The Special Rapporteur's findings are an important and timely addition to the growing international consensus that Israeli authorities are committing apartheid against the Palestinian people. The report details how Israel has established a system of racially motivated oppression against Palestinians, explicitly designed to maintain Jewish Israeli domination, and maintained through the commission of grave human rights violations.

"Palestinian human rights organizations have been calling the situation apartheid for years, and this report is a landmark moment of recognition of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians. Like Amnesty International and many other human rights groups, the Special Rapporteur examined Israel's treatment of Palestinians through the lens of international law and reached the unmistakeable conclusion that this is apartheid.

"In recent months Israel has intensified its efforts to censor and discredit anyone who uses the word apartheid. Instead of engaging with serious allegations made by human rights organizations and now the UN, Israeli authorities continue to limit their response to attacking the messenger with groundless accusations of bias. This failing strategy cannot hide the growing consensus among experts that the harsh reality of the grinding oppression to which Israel subjects Palestinians on a daily basis is a textbook example of apartheid.

"The report emphasizes the need for the international community to accept the findings of human rights organizations, including Amnesty, and start calling Israel's apartheid what it is. The international community, in particular countries allied to Israel, must stop making excuses for this cruel system of racial domination and oppression and take immediate action to help end apartheid and protect Palestinian rights. "

Amnesty International's February 2022 report sets out how Israel is enforcing a system of apartheid against Palestinians wherever it has control of their rights, including within Israel. Amnesty is calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to consider the crime of apartheid in its current investigation in the OPT, and for all states to exercise universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute persons suspected of the crime against humanity of apartheid.
"Palestinian human rights organizations have been calling the situation apartheid for years, and this report is a landmark moment of recognition of the lived reality of millions of Palestinians. Like Amnesty International and many other human rights groups, the Special Rapporteur examined Israel's treatment of Palestinians through the lens of international law and reached the unmistakeable conclusion that this is apartheid.

"In recent months Israel has intensified its efforts to censor and discredit anyone who uses the word apartheid. Instead of engaging with serious allegations made by human rights organizations and now the UN, Israeli authorities continue to limit their response to attacking the messenger with groundless accusations of bias. This failing strategy cannot hide the growing consensus among experts that the harsh reality of the grinding oppression to which Israel subjects Palestinians on a daily basis is a textbook example of apartheid.

The report of the Special Rapporteur examines the current human rights situation in the OPT, with particular focus on the question of apartheid. It finds that Israeli Jews and Palestinians in Occupied Palestinian Territories live "under a single regime which differentiates its distribution of rights and benefits on the basis of national and ethnic identity, and which ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other."  It sets out how this system "endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule", and concludes that this "satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid".

In January, a leaked cable from the Israeli Foreign Ministry  https://www.axios.com/israel-discredit-un-human-rights-probe-gaza-palestinians-951e3799-2f2b-4c1f-ad3c-5a8a15aa7ac9.html described a planned campaign to discredit the Special Rapporteur's work, and Israeli authorities have prevented UN human rights staff and investigators from entering Israel and/or the OPT. This is part of a wide-ranging attack on human rights which has also seen Palestinian organizations outlawed, harassed and silenced.